Category Archives: Okinawa

I first the island chain of Okinawa (part of present-day Japan) in the fall of 2000. Since then, I’ve gone there whenever I can. Videos in this category were made in or inspired by Okinawa.

MiNdToUcH – Minor Intrusion Sesson

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It was good news back in the fall, when I heard that MiNdToUcH had released his first album, ToNight aT NoON (you can download it for free at Bandcamp I’ve been keeping an ear out for his music during the past few years, tracking his admirably steady flow of new tracks, in years past on Myspace, and more recently on Soundcloud. I first met him in my Seoul apartment back in 2006 when he came by my place to have a look at some gear I was selling. No transaction took place, but our conversation started.

I appreciate how he’s built and evolved his recording set-up. In a day and age when people (myself being one of them) get carried away with desire for the latest recording gear and functions, MiNdToUcH has so far taken quite a stripped down approach. Much of his music gets made on samplers, like the Akai MPC 3000, which would have cost a fortune in their early 90s heyday and are now affordable collector’s items to be found on eBay and used shops. But, far from being dated by the 90s gear, I find something very sustainable in MiNdToUcH’s approach to making music – it’s refreshing to see somebody recording machine-based music without being dependent on evolutions of Mac or Windows operating systems and the resulting upgrade-itis. He seems to have this love for his hardware, which makes him want to try different stuff out, but he doesn’t seem to stockpile stuff. All gear he has is used and part of his workflow, or else it’s quickly gone. There’s nothing flashy about his approach, no unnecessary gestures – watching him at his equipment you can’t help but admire the certainty of his hand movements, the lack of hesitation.

Seeing MiNdToUcH’s stacks of floppy discs, each disc containing one set of beats, makes me think of a poet and his or her stack of notebooks. Each disc holds 10s of seconds of sounds, not even a minute. He seems to begin with a process of disassembly – then, when all the suitable bits and pieces are treated and gathered, the assembly begins anew, but it is a different work that has been created. After getting everything ready in the sequencer and the right sound on the right pad, he records the output to an external device – he seems to be access most of the tracks from his album right on his Roland SP-4-4. Then, on another day, he can rearrange, refocus, and reconstitute the same fragments into another flow. What exists on these discs is not finished songs, but a set of sounds ready to breathe again once inserted into the sampler, possibilities waiting to be conjured.

It would do an injustice to MiNdToUcH to dwell too long on his gear or his workflow. His music is above its process. He happens to be a photographer par excellence, and, bearing this in mind, I can’t help thinking of him as a photographer of music, circling around the sounds that he samples, shining a light on what was previously dark, overexposing something, playing with the contrasts – some techniques employed later in the dark room and others at the time of shooting. Clicking, adjusting, rotating, freezing, tapping, releasing …

MiNdToUcH’s music does what the name promises – the music becomes part of a thought process – ideas looping, new ones joining, something remembered then forgotten, an idea modified over time, a new notion. This could be a soundtrack to finding keys and then looking for doors.

Having met him in Seoul, having lived in Seoul myself, I can’t help associating his sound with Seoul. When I hear it, I feel the stop-start rhythms of the bus that carries me through central Seoul, the random announcements – I see the little slices of everyday life and occasional drama that catch my eye through the bus window … the minor intrigue of someone getting in or out of a taxi, a couple side by side both on the phone, a kid restlessly waiting … being out too late, needing to get up too early.

On the day, I filmed the brief scenes in this video, I arrived at his place late afternoon. As soon as I got there, he said we’d go out for a drink, as he’d already spent ample time in his home studio that day. But I pried a bit, asking him about this or that, and in the process of demoing something, he stumbled onto some sounds he liked, and a new session started. Finally, one more disc was added to the stack.

Autumn in the Tropics

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An underwater electronic meltdown filmed off the coast of Miyakojima Island, Okinawa, Japan in 2006. I hope this captures some of the awesome feeling of snorkeling far out from shore on a sunny day. I love seeing the bubbles, breaking the surface, and feeling the difference between air and water. The light and color dance everywhere.
The music is “Automne” by Seafran. I’d been to Miyako in June, and collected a lot of underwater images with my Olympus camera. I still want to edit this footage using the water sounds as music, but that’s technically difficult – and as I was working on this, my friend Seafran sent me a few of his tracks, and I thought this one matched really well.
I threw a lot of the video clips into my VJ software, Arkaos, and visually jammed along with the music for several takes. Then, using Final Cut, I edited together the better takes.

Experience Nature

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After the week on Miyako Island, I passed through the Okinawa main island for a night, where I visited my Okinawan karate teacher’s home. The suggestion was made that I join one of my ‘senpai’ (seniors) to check out the interesting home of someone they knew. They pointed to the distant hillside and asked if I could see the part where there were no trees, owing to a recent mudslide – well, just on the edge of that, lived this person they know
So, we drove up the hill above the little harbor town. Literally, a few feet away from the edge of where the land had slid was his place. He had this kind of outdoor home set-up, like a one-bedroom apartment, without walls or a ceiling, with well-endowed statues he’d made.
I was tremendously interested in this unusual character and abode, but I was just getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes. I was the only one in shorts (and sandals, too), as is often the case for a Westerner in Japan, not good clothing for the jungle, plus the air was chilly, and I was getting cold, as it grew dark. Also, couldn’t help being a little concerned about the stability of the ground itself.
“Experience nature!,” the man enthusiastically said in English.

Ame Agaru Onna

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This video was made for the same-titled song by Chiharu Miwa (Note: I think their might be a group name, which I’ll find out when I get the chance.) It was made on Miyako island in Okinawa, Japan in the fall of 2003. At the time, I helped her put together a set of videos to go with her music. This is one of them. As I recall, it was made simply in iMovie, using mostly footage from Miyako itself.

The Restless Sea

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Leaving Okinawa tomorrow. It felt intense standing on this cliff above the Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum. The sky was heavy and near to rain, the beach looking dark, the waves coming in steady one after another, without consciousness. The history of this place is so tragic. When America bombed this area in World War II, it was nicknamed the ‘typhoon of steel’. It is said to have been bombed so much that the landscape changed. I read that a third of the Okinawan people died.

The usual route

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Dec. 11th :4:30PM – some park on Okinawa Honto – There’s all kinds of species of trees. A cloudy day that cleared up and is again becoming cloudy. There won’t be any sunset tonight – as if the sun doesn’t set. We never say there won’t be any tonight. I feel like I’m in the Okinawa pavilion that will be created for a future Disneyland. Anyway, the air is cold, and if there’s ocean around here, I wouldn’t want to swim in it. I’ve noticed this sign today – underneath 2 Kanji, it says, “usual route.” If there’s anything I can’t take about what seems to be the dominating Japanese system, it’s the confinement of time and the organization of movement through spaces. I forgot what the world of the tourist is like until I joined this tour today. Living in Miyako, I forgot so many things, and yesterday arriving in Naha, I was brought back to reality in a lot of ways.